Genesis 8:15

Summary

Genesis 8:15 introduces a divine speech act: God addresses Noah directly. The verse is a short narrative formula that sets up the instructions God will give in the following verses.

Key words

• va-y'daBer ("and he spoke", H1696G) — piel narrative verb with the vav consecutive; the piel stem gives an intensive or communicative nuance to "speaking" (rather than a bare utterance), and the vav connects this action sequentially to the prior narrative.
• 'Elohim ("God", H0430G) — plural noun form functioning as the grammatical subject of the singular verb y'daBer, a common pattern in the Hebrew text when referring to the deity as a singular agent despite the plural noun form.
• 'el- ("to", H0413) — preposition marking the directional target of the speech, indicating Noah as the recipient.
• Noach ("Noah", H5146) — proper noun, the addressee, masculine person.
• le-'mor ("saying", H0559) — qal infinitive construct with prefixed preposition le, a standard formula introducing direct speech; it functions to open a quotation that follows in subsequent verses.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence follows a fixed narrative pattern common in this text for introducing divine speech: subject-verb-prepositional phrase-infinitive marker. The verb y'daBer is prefixed with the narrative vav (H9001), which chains this clause to the preceding material as a sequential event ("and then..."). The piel stem of daBer (H1696G) contributes an intensive quality to the act of speaking, distinguishing it from the simpler qal form of the same root; this piel is standard in Hebrew for formal or significant speech acts of God to a named figure.

The construction 'el- Noach uses the preposition H0413 to specify Noah as the one being addressed, and the clause closes with le-'mor (H0559), the infinitive construct introducing the content of what is said — a formula that opens direct discourse without yet stating its content in this verse.

Differences between versions

The LXX text reads εἶπεν κύριος ὁ θεὸς ("the Lord God said"), inserting κύριος ("Lord") in addition to ὁ θεὸς ("God"), where the Hebrew text presents only 'Elohim ("God", H0430G) without an equivalent for "Lord". The Vulgate (Locutus est autem Deus, "But God spoke") and the Hebrew both use a single term for the divine subject, aligning more closely with each other than with the LXX's double designation.